Pitru was an ancient town off the Sajur ( ''Sagura'' and ''Sagurru'') (+36° 39' 16.62", +38° 4' 7.96"), a western tributary of the

Euphrates The Euphrates ( ; see #Etymology, below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of West Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (). Originati ...

, approximately 12.5 miles south of ancient Carchemish. It is thought to be the Pethor mentioned in

Numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

22 as the home of Balaam, the non-

Israelite Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

prophet called upon by Balak to curse the Israelites of the Exodus (circa 1406 BCE, perhaps). Pitru was established by

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

n ruler

Tiglath-Pileser I Tiglath-Pileser I (; from the Hebraic form of , "my trust is in the son of Ešarra") was a king of Assyria during the Middle Assyrian period (1114–1076 BC). According to Georges Roux, Tiglath-Pileser was "one of the two or three great Assyri ...

in c. 1100 BCE, but it was later seized by the

Arameans The Arameans, or Aramaeans (; ; , ), were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered c ...

. It is later mentioned as one of the Hatti cities or villages conquered by either Ashurnasirpal II (reigned 883 – 859 BCE) or his son

Shalmaneser III Shalmaneser III (''Šulmānu-ašarēdu'', "the god Shulmanu is pre-eminent") was king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 859 BC to 824 BC. His long reign was a constant series of campaigns against the eastern tribes, the Babylonians, the nations o ...

, Assyrian rulers. It was later given an Assyrian name in Shalmaneser's sixth year, becoming a base of operations for further military campaigns.

Sources

* Bryce, Trevor., ''The Routledge Handbook of The People and Places of Ancient Western Asia: The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the fall of the Persians Empire'' * Hogarth, D. G. (David George), 1862-1927, ''The Ancient East'' * Luckenbill, Daniel D., ''Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. 1: Historical Records of Assyria, from the earliest times to Sargon'', (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 1926. {{Authority control Ancient Near East 11th-century BC establishments